EVE Online: Chinese Open Beta Off to Good Start

Stradden · June 2006

CCP Games, the company responsible for the popular sci-fi MMORPG, EVE Online, have announced that they have had an excellent turnour for the first day of their open beta phase in China.

EVE ONLINE® GOES LIVE IN CHINA

EVE ONLINE'S OPEN BETA IN CHINA IS AN IMMEDIATE SUCCESS

Shanghai, China June 13, 2006 The first day of EVE Onlines open Beta in China resulted in a new world record for the number of simultaneous users playing in the same game world, as more than 30,000 users logged into the game server just hours after opening. CCP Games, an independent producer of massively multiplayer online games and producer of EVE Online, also announced that over 200,000 players from China registered for the game during the first day of the of the open Beta.

It was quite amazing to see the population of EVE China exceed the population of Iceland in the second day of open Beta testing. said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games. EVE China has been an exciting collaboration project and continues to be so, as we continue to refine the experience to accommodate for the steep growth rate of both our English and Chinese worlds.

Optic Communicationsthe licensing partner of CCP Games in Chinais operating the fully localized cluster, which runs separately from the Western variant of EVE Online. CCP Games states that maintaining two independent clusters is necessary because of the unique operating environment in China and the steep growth trends of both gaming markets. EVE Online continues to maintain exceptional growth in the United States and Europe, where the combined regional demand forecasts emphasize the strategic need for cluster isolation.

The enthusiastic response of the Chinese player community to EVE Online is rewarding, said Kjartan Pierre Emilsson, Managing Director of CCP Asia. We believe that our unique one world design, great flexibility in character advancement, and social game play are a perfect fit for the highly dedicated and knowledgeable Chinese player base.

For more on EVE Online, click here.

badirontree · June 2006

kinda suck that they break the US/EU record in the first day of beta lol

China pleople are crazy

more money for CCp beter for alll!!!

Jorev · June 2006

Report just in.

Farming revenues are exceeding expectations.

DrAtomic · June 2006

Lol, 30.000+ I bet it crashed hard the CCP way... prolly will be bouncing up and down far past release lol.

Beatnik59 · June 2006

I'm glad CCP is doing well in China. Kind of makes you wonder if they really need us anymore.

But on a more serious note, this whole China thing Oveur and crew have been drooling over is the first real indication that these people are no better than SOE, Blizzard, NCSoft, or take your pick. Despite how they say they are doing it for the good of the game, they are really only doing it for the money.

Make no mistake, its the core playerbase and the veterans of EVE that made CCP's launch in China successful. They paid for it in two ways: through subscription money used to fund China, and through a lack of development that the subscription money was supposed to go toward.

What makes CCP so frustrating is their belief that if they state something with enough conviction, it actually becomes what they say it is. My favorite is calling a patch a "free expansion," as if it was something that we wouldn't otherwise get from other MMOs if it was simply called a patch, like everyone else calls it. They say in the above press release that they have a "unique, one world design."

Perhaps they did at one time, but when there is money to be made in China, saying it doesn't make it true. Now it is a two world design, which begs the question of if they can compromise their vision for the Chinese market, why can't they make another Western server where we don't have to deal with 1000 man twink blobs who have camped all the endgame areas for years now? Given a choice, I can take a bet where most new or moderate time players will go.

CCP's China thing just tells me that these people are nothing special. Don't get me wrong, they are better than most, but this episode tells me that they'll make promises they cannot keep (Kali), sacrifice customer service for cash money (Lags, bugs, and exploits not getting resolved), and make any concession for a few dollars more (banning ISK sellers, but facilitating ISK sales for game time cards).

The difference between CCP and SOE is not that they are any better, but that CCP is a master of spinning things to make them look better than they are.

enkaedu · June 2006

I'm confused about two things:

1) In all the articles about the launch, there is no indication of where people go to get on the China version of the game. Is it totally segregated to China? If so, hmmmm... Interesting that no one would ever contemplate a segregated version of the game where only, say, the Danish could play.

2) Why are we always surprised when people act like people?

Of course CCP is going to try to make a buck in China. Of course they are going to pour their capital into growth markets. But I reckon what they have done is far short of the SWG maneuver. We still have ever-improving gameplay and more-or-less the same game we paid for, and if CCP makes a boat load of "ISK" in China, what goes around can also come around. It might lift the game for everyone. (More ISK, more developers, but of course the question mark is whether increased resources comes with good management - hard to predict.)

Also, remember that CCP was not created solely on the backs of our hard-earned $14/month. It was also capitalized in advance by investors from S&SH and elsewhere. They are in it for financial returns. That's why they gave us - the devs and the subsequent community of players - the money so that we could have this game in the first place.

Too bad we couldn't have continued with a single universe that included China, but most folks understand the practical issues of that. Necessity trumps the ideal, and if there is a creative approach that could have achieved single-universe expansion without endless issues of language, macro-mining, server-hit and timezone dt issues (as a player in Australia, it sucks that we have to interrupt play every night at 8pm), it escapes my imagination.

At least the China expansion adds fuel to the CCP fire, and news of its record-breaking numbers there may continue to translate into more players for the rest of us in Tranquility.

koshua · June 2006

Originally posted by Beatnik59

I'm glad CCP is doing well in China. Kind of makes you wonder if they really need us anymore.
But on a more serious note, this whole China thing Oveur and crew have been drooling over is the first real indication that these people are no better than SOE, Blizzard, NCSoft, or take your pick. Despite how they say they are doing it for the good of the game, they are really only doing it for the money.
Make no mistake, its the core playerbase and the veterans of EVE that made CCP's launch in China successful. They paid for it in two ways: through subscription money used to fund China, and through a lack of development that the subscription money was supposed to go toward.
What makes CCP so frustrating is their belief that if they state something with enough conviction, it actually becomes what they say it is. My favorite is calling a patch a "free expansion," as if it was something that we wouldn't otherwise get from other MMOs if it was simply called a patch, like everyone else calls it. They say in the above press release that they have a "unique, one world design."
Perhaps they did at one time, but when there is money to be made in China, saying it doesn't make it true. Now it is a two world design, which begs the question of if they can compromise their vision for the Chinese market, why can't they make another Western server where we don't have to deal with 1000 man twink blobs who have camped all the endgame areas for years now? Given a choice, I can take a bet where most new or moderate time players will go.
CCP's China thing just tells me that these people are nothing special. Don't get me wrong, they are better than most, but this episode tells me that they'll make promises they cannot keep (Kali), sacrifice customer service for cash money (Lags, bugs, and exploits not getting resolved), and make any concession for a few dollars more (banning ISK sellers, but facilitating ISK sales for game time cards).
The difference between CCP and SOE is not that they are any better, but that CCP is a master of spinning things to make them look better than they are.

Are we even playing the same game? And talking about the same company?

Oveur is on record as saying that the whole point of operating in China is to make money. This "good of the game" crap sounds more like a retired soccer player than Eve's notorious senior producer. No doubt the resulting megabucks will be invested in growing CCP as a company, because that's just sound business practice. Unless they start developing another game, that means investment in Eve. Or did I miss something in economics 101? Do you think they're going to invest it in junk bonds?
I don't understand your "subscription money supposed to go to developing content" argument. I'm not paying into a retirement fund or tithing to some cult here, I'm paying for a service - one that gives me hours of joy each week. I didn't choose Eve because I liked CCP's business model.
CCP release two kinds of patch: those that introduce new content, and those that fix bugs. Unlike many (but not all) other MMOs, we get both included in our subscription. The recent big content patch, Blood, introduced new races, new ships, new NPCs, new missions; to me, that's an expansion. What are you talking about?
They fix bugs. They've fixed all three that I've reported since I started playing (although I'm sure two of those were reported by Just About Everybody). And the one exploit that I discovered and reported no longer works.
Eve has no endgame.
No-one has ever fielded a 1000-man gang. The peak ever was 800-ish in one mighty assault that was one of the most mind-boggling events I've witnessed in any game before or since. If anyone ever cracks the 1000-player barrier in a single event, it will no doubt be a similarly titanic event and I just hope I'm part of it. This stuff is the strength of the game, not a weakness. And I'm one of those "new to moderate time players" you sneer at.
I thought direct ISK for dollar sales were banned for two reasons: a) CCP make less money and b) it encourages macro farming. Surely both are valid reasons though. Selling timecards has neither result.

Now, about the "one world design" bit. Here I pause and think that yes, spawning a parallel EVE universe in China is effectively sharding. CCP cannot have it both ways on that score. The architecture of EVE is still one of a long-lived, ever-changing universe backed by what is effectively a supercomputer cluster, but it's still a shard, even if on a colossal scale.

But the rest of your hysterical post appears to be baseless, vindictive trashing.

kishe · June 2006

Game companies aiming for Chinese market HAS to make new servers for the chinese these days because of local laws.

and yes, they are doing this for money and if more money means more content, then i'm all for it! I even wish they'd make enough money so we'd see Eve 2 some day.

CCP is one of the only companies that promises a little but delivers it all and with extra...they have my respect for that.

pirrg · June 2006

Originally posted by enkaedu

I'm confused about two things:
1) In all the articles about the launch, there is no indication of where people go to get on the China version of the game. Is it totally segregated to China? If so, hmmmm... Interesting that no one would ever contemplate a segregated version of the game where only, say, the Danish could play.
2) Why are we always surprised when people act like people?
Of course CCP is going to try to make a buck in China. Of course they are going to pour their capital into growth markets. But I reckon what they have done is far short of the SWG maneuver. We still have ever-improving gameplay and more-or-less the same game we paid for, and if CCP makes a boat load of "ISK" in China, what goes around can also come around. It might lift the game for everyone. (More ISK, more developers, but of course the question mark is whether increased resources comes with good management - hard to predict.)
Also, remember that CCP was not created solely on the backs of our hard-earned $14/month. It was also capitalized in advance by investors from S&SH and elsewhere. They are in it for financial returns. That's why they gave us - the devs and the subsequent community of players - the money so that we could have this game in the first place.
Too bad we couldn't have continued with a single universe that included China, but most folks understand the practical issues of that. Necessity trumps the ideal, and if there is a creative approach that could have achieved single-universe expansion without endless issues of language, macro-mining, server-hit and timezone dt issues (as a player in Australia, it sucks that we have to interrupt play every night at 8pm), it escapes my imagination.
At least the China expansion adds fuel to the CCP fire, and news of its record-breaking numbers there may continue to translate into more players for the rest of us in Tranquility.

The chinsese have their own server due to chinese internet and mmo laws.

Im happy as hell for CCP. More subs means more money which means more resources for developing eve-online.

Minsc · June 2006

Originally posted by DrAtomic
Lol, 30.000+ I bet it crashed hard the CCP way... prolly will be bouncing up and down far past release lol.

According to one of the normal server players that managed to get on the china server, they've seen 33k+ logged in and the server was running fine, and that was with everyone in the noobie areas.

Beatnik59 · June 2006

Originally posted by koshua

But the rest of your hysterical post appears to be baseless, vindictive trashing.

--I have no doubts they really want to make a killing in China. But where's Kali? The Kali they promised us that we'd have now? Instead of doing what they promised, they seem interested in anything but solving the content problems they admit we have. Integrated voice chat, deals with Windows Vista for the graphics update. They are using Kali as a carrot, while doing anything but Kali. They seem to be more interested in working with all these big companies rather than us, the players, like they always used to do.

--Service doesn't cost $15 a month. It costs significantly less than that. The question becomes what do we get for the money? Apparently for promises of expansions not forthcoming, for another shard that we cannot access, that does nothing but fill Oveur's pockets. I understand that many would gladly pay $15 a month to meet death at the hands of 1000 player twink armies. Frankly, I'd pay double to play the same game to start from scratch, on a new server, so I don't have to deal with events three years before I had any chance to do anything about them.

--To you, things like "Blood" are "expansions." CCP bills them as expansions, because it sounds like they are giving us something that they would normally charge for, away for free. You'll find CCP does this a lot, and plays on our established definition of terms to make something look like something it isn't. Mining is not PvP, simply because CCP says it is. Voice chat does not enhance immersion, simply because CCP says it does. But the only reason things like "Blood," and "Exodus" are free is because there isn't much there to justify an extra fee. Real expansions like those in Everquest and Guild Wars add much more, and justify the extra cost. They give so much more to players than Asian models and a few new reskinned twinking ships. And the fact of the matter is if it were a real expansion, it would be my choice to buy into it or not.

--Evey day I run into a new bug. Collision detection is poor. Distances don't always translate. Lag even in lightly traveled systems can be frequent. Ships disappear. I never had these problems on the old server archetecture, and it seems like not much is being done to solve it.

--Maybe not a 100 man gang, but maybe ten 100 man dreadnought blobs to take out POS just because they can. If you want to get podded and blow your load just for a few minutes so you can see twinks that don't care about anyone else, be my guest. I'd rather start on a new server that isn't camped by three year old players in "good old boys" networks. I don't think I'm alone. But this is an empirically testable hypothesis. Just give us a new shard, like they did with China, and watch the tremendous sucking sound of players who'd like to visit Stain and the Cloud Ring for once pour out of Tranquility. Believe me though, CCP knows this, and for these reasons will not, because they want their vets that have stuck by them to have fresh helots to boss around.

--We have problems with macro farming now. We also have people who get huge ISK checks for paying $15 or more. The difference is that they buy game cards in between. Good for CCP revenue? You bet. It doesn't mean it cannot affect the game negatively. Anytime BOB needs more ISK, they'll just buy game cards, so they can free up their time throwing 100 dreadnought blobs at POIs just to show how big their ePeens are.

The good thing about this China thing is that we have seen that CCP will compromise their vision for the sake of incresed revenue, and reaching a greater audience. They'll abandon "one server" for China, which means perhaps they'll abandon "one server" for those who do not want to have to deal with 1000 player twink alliances squatting on content, if its worth their while to do so.

I disagree though that my reasoning is baseless and vindictive. Because as much as the apologists for EVE and CCP will say this is no big deal, they cannot deny that Kali was promised, it is not here, and we have a whole lot of developer attention going toward things we did not ask for, and were not told about last year.

It feels almost like another MMO I played, who kept on delaying a needed upgrade and combat balance for the sake of other content, other markets, and other things than what we needed. Who used the upcoming balance as a good "carrot on a stick" to keep subscribers subscribed, and maintain the appearance that they had a stake in the future of the game. That was SWG, and their combat rebalance, which turned into the biggest farce in online gaming.

There was a time when CCP could not afford to tick off their base, because their base was all it had. But now that there is more revenue coming in from China, the base can be a bit more expendable.

Minsc · June 2006

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Originally posted by koshua

But the rest of your hysterical post appears to be baseless, vindictive trashing.